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The illustration on the cover of the Thanksgiving issue of The New Yorker magazine shows the Pilgrims immigrating to their new homeland. It’s called “Promised Land” by Christoph Niemann. Link
Image: Robert Burns/LA Times
The stimulus didn't work. The bank bailouts didn't work. Homeowner assistance and refinancing didn't work. So could the key to solving the US housing crisis be letting foreigners buy real estate for visas?
The bipartisan proposal, part of a package that also would make it easier for international tourists to visit the U.S., is similar to an existing program that puts foreigners on a fast track to a green card if they invest at least $500,000 in an American business that creates at least 10 jobs.
"Many people want to come and live in the United States," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who introduced the legislation Thursday along with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). "They will be here spending money and paying taxes, and the most important thing is they'll sop up the extra supply of homes we have right now compared to demand, and that's what's dragging our economy down."
The legislation would create a new homeowner visa that would be renewable every three years, but the proposal would not put them on a path to citizenship. To be eligible, a person would have to buy a primary residence of at least $250,000 and spend a total of $500,000 on residential real estate. The other properties could be rented.
Jim Puzzanghera and Lauren Beale of The Los Angeles Times report: Link
The Migrations Map is an interactive map that lets you see which countries people are moving to and from across the world. Here, for example, are the ten largest streams of immigrants into Australia. The UK contributes the largest share with over one million current residents of Australia.
This map was made by Martin De Wulf, a computer scientist in Brussels.
Link -via MetaFilter
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It was a profitable but outrageous scheme, set forth in a trial going on now. Prosecutors are charging that David Deng recruited Chinese immigrants to join the “U.S. Army/Military Special Forces Reserve” to help their chances of obtaining U.S. citizenship, and that he charged hundred of dollars from his “soldiers.” The U.S. military has no such unit. The group is well known in Asian-American neighborhoods of Los Angeles, where community leaders had no idea they weren’t government issue.
Last year, one Chinese-language newspaper reported that an Alhambra taxi driver was arrested near Los Angeles International Airport after producing counterfeit military identification while trying to get out of a traffic stop.
Investigators learned that the recruits were told that the military IDs could be used to avoid getting traffic tickets and to receive certain types of military benefits and discounts, Eimiller said.
Some of the recruits were so convinced that they were part of the U.S. military that they actually visited real Army recruiting centers and tried to pay their monthly dues directly to the U.S. government, Eimiller said. That was another tipoff when investigators began looking into the group.
Local Chinese American leaders on Wednesday said they were shocked that a group that was such a familiar presence in the community is now being accused of being a fraud.
If convicted of all charges, Daniel Deng could face 11 years in prison. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: FBI)
NY Times columnist David Brooks asks: Are new immigrants wrecking the social fabric of the United States? Or is it the other way around? Is America corrupting them instead?
Back in 2010, researchers from Brown University have noticed that first generation immigrant children generally outperform second and third generation immigrant children, despite having the largest linguistic and cultural barriers. They call this "Immigrant Paradox":
“These are very unusual findings,” said Garcia Coll, the Robinson and Barstow Professor of Education, Psychology and Pediatrics at Brown. “In a time where immigrants are seen as detriments to our society and not making contributions, what this research is telling us is that the first generations come in with amazing energy and amazing capabilities of surmounting lack of education in parents, poverty, and language differences. The tragedy is that as some kids acculturate and become American, they start doing worse.”
Now, a new research from the University of Florida found further support for the Immigrant Paradox: the second and third generations also tend to get into more trouble. Mildred Maldonado-Molina, et al. looked at the pattern of DUI arrests and found that first-generation immigrants have the lowest rate of DUI arrests, as well as marijuana and alcohol use. Second generation US-born Hispanic youth has higher rates of those three things, and third generation even worse.
Interesting, huh? What do you think the reason for immigrants’ children and grandchildren doing progressively "worse" in those metrics?
Jenny and Dave usually write about impressions of India on their American sensibilities. Now they are turning the tables, and blogging about how the United States appears to those who arrive for the first time from India. They followed the stories of two visitors, and then opened up comments for more experiences. One commenter said:
During my first visit to the USA I was put up at Hotel Hilton Garden Inn in Atlanta…being from India where generally there is only one hotel of any chain no matter how big … it was a shock for me when my cabbie drove me across the city for half an hour and I spotted 7 different hiltons before I reached the one where I was booked. I could spot the same pattern repeating every few miles … same Mc Donalds and KFC’s … same walmarts, circuit city and best buys …. it was very weird
If you have a story about your first thoughts upon arriving in the U.S, you are welcome to leave a comment here or at Our Delhi Struggle. Link -Thanks, Dave!
(Image credit: Flickr user Nick Sherman)
Mark Lamster interviewed 97-year-old Morris Moel, who immigrated to the United States from Ukraine, a part of the Soviet Union in 1922. The story is typical of that era’s immigrants, which means it was a heroic struggle to get here. His father came first, then Moel was separated from this mother when she went to Warsaw, and then his grandmother died. But Moel’s mother arranged for strangers to get the youngsters out of Ukraine.
The Russian part of the border was all forest. And we were stopped. I heard rifles being cocked while we were walking. Russian soldiers. And the soldiers searched everyone and took everything that was valuable and said you’ve got to go back, and I guess they [the guides] knew another route so we got through. And the Polish border was absolutely free, but it was all snow. I was so little and my older borther dragged me across that border. Finally we got to the other side inside Poland. Stayed in a house for half a night and we were then taken to a train station. And that train took us into Warsaw. The first time I was in a train. And my mother was waiting for us in an office. We told her my grandmother died. She never knew about it.
It took many more months for Moel to actually reach America. Link -via Jason Kottke
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We don’t post a lot of politics here on Neatorama, so pardon me for this post about the new and controversial Arizona law that forced local police to check whether a person is an illegal immigrant (presumably from Mexico).
Critics contend that the law will lead to racial profiling. Even Mexican President Felipe Calderón has blasted the law as violating basic human rights.
Whether you agree with the law or not, here’s the point of this post: it turns out that despite its bluster, Mexico actually has very similar laws on its book against the country’s own Honduran illegal immigrants!
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the law "violates inalienable human rights" and Democrats in Congress applauded Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s criticisms of the law in a speech he gave on Capitol Hill last week.
Yet Mexico’s Arizona-style law requires local police to check IDs. And Mexican police freely engage in racial profiling and routinely harass Central American migrants, say immigration activists. [...]
"There (in the United States), they’ll deport you," Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. "In Mexico they’ll probably let you go, but they’ll beat you up and steal everything you’ve got first."
Chris Hawley of USA Today has the full story: Link (Photo: Sergio Solache/USA Today)
Forget Who Wants To Marry a Multi-Millionaire! There’s an even better reality
tv / dating show idea: Who Wants To Marry a U.S. Citizen:
Who Wants to Marry a U.S. Citizen was a show devised by the geniuses
at Morusa Media in California in 2007, and by the end of that year they already had the first pool of contestants and a host signed up. The idea? A lucky, single American woman goes on dates with three handsome but illegal immigrants and at the end picks one with which to spend the rest of her life. Said the host Angelo Gonzales before the show presumably fell through: ‘There are thousands of US citizens seeking a spouse, and just as many immigrants seeking the same. So we want to make it a win-win situation for all involved’. Who can argue?
More at Shaun Usher’s The World’s Worst Dating Show Ideas – Thanks David!
27-year-old Lin Rong re-entered Japan even though she had earlier been deported back to China. She wasn’t caught until she was arrested on other charges, because her fingerprints were different. Lin had undergone surgery to have her left fingerprints moved to her right hand, and vice versa!
Local media reports said Ms Lin had undergone surgery to swap the fingerprints from her right and left hands.
Skin patches on her thumbs and index fingers were removed and then re-grafted on to the matching digits of the opposite hand.
Japanese newspapers said police had noticed that Ms Lin’s fingers had unnatural scars when she was arrested last month for allegedly faking a marriage to a Japanese man.
Lin reportedly paid around $15,000 for the surgery in China. Link -via Boing Boing
(image credit: Flicker user chadmiller)
Think you’ve got problems? They ain’t nothin’ compared to Santa’s problems. Bella English of Boston.com outlines the sleighful of problems that the jolly Saint Nick has got:
Just the other day, the American Medical Association released a study showing Santa’s body mass index to be “dangerously high’’ at 30 percent, which makes him obese, which puts him at high risk for a heart attack, which means he should not be flying at high altitudes.
Not only that, but Lou Dobbs on his radio show recently suggested that Santa, because he lives in the North Pole, is not a US citizen and therefore should not be allowed to fly over our country, much less land on rooftops. He’s asked the Immigration and Naturalization Service to look into the matter. [...]
This just in: At the opening of the Copenhagen climate talks yesterday, a special session was called to discuss a newly discovered greenhouse gas. “It seems that reindeer droppings from the long flight give
off methane, adding to the monumental climate gas problem,’’said one noted scientist. A committee is studying whether to charge Santa a new carbon emissions tax, which will, of course, be passed along to consumers.Speaking of reindeer, PETA is protesting the lengthy work hours of the reindeer, whose journey spans many time zones. The animal rights group is also looking into reports that Rudolph was targeted for bullying by the others not because of his red nose but because he is gay.
Meanwhile, Dasher has denied rumors that he tested positive for anabolic steroids, but he has refused to take a lie detector test.
More Santa shenanigans at the very funny Santa, NO! Tumblr blog (may be NSFW, you’ve been warned)
The British Home Office’s effort to crack down on illegal immigrations has an unintended consequences of sort: Britain is experiencing a clown shortage!
"My season started in February," says Martin Lacey, owner of the Great British Circus, "and I’ve got comedy acrobats stranded in the Ukraine, and Mongolian horse riders who were refused their visas in Ulan Batur." The holes in his lineup have forced Lacey to draft last-minute substitutes. "Our Mexican clown is stuck in Mexico, so we’ve got a trapeze artist pretending to be a stooge just to get everybody out of trouble," he says. "It’s a mess."
And it’s totally incompatible with the needs of Britain’s circus sector. According to Malcolm Clay, secretary of the Association of Circus Proprietors of Great Britain, British circus schools don’t produce artists at an acceptable standard, largely because their students refine skills like tightrope walking or fire-breathing as a hobby, not as part of a life-long career. As a result, British circuses rely on artists from countries with long-established histories of state-sponsored circus schools: they call on Argentina and Colombia for their renowned high wire acts, China and North Korea for acrobats, and Mongolia and Russia for horse riders. (Interestingly, they don’t need to import bearded ladies.)
This is the sort of thing that only government bureaucracy can come up with: Australian immigration authorities have decided that Rosabelle Glasby couldn’t bring her identical twin sister into the country because … they’re not related!
Adopted by different families shortly after their birth in Malaysia, Mrs Glasby and Dorothy Loader were separated for almost 50 years before finally meeting last September.
But now Mrs Glasby, from Margaret River, is facing an uphill battle to be permanently reunited with her twin, who lives in Malaysia. In a letter to Mrs Glasby last month, DIAC state director Paul Farrell explained that despite the circumstances, the present laws meant Ms Loader would not be eligible for family migration.
"Under Migration Law where the legal relationship between a child and his/her birth parents has been severed by adoption, the legal relationship between the child and his/her birth siblings is also severed,” he said.
"It therefore does not appear that your twin sister would be eligible for a permanent visa under the Family Stream of the Migration Program.”
Mrs Glasby said she was heartbroken that her long-lost twin did not qualify as family. "We’re identical twin sisters _ we’re the same egg,” she said. “Just because we got adopted into different families they say they don’t consider us related. It’s hard to get anyone more related to me.”
No, this is not a political post. It’s just a cool video graphically showing streams of immigration from different parts of the world to the U.S. Nice swirly colors.
Via Glenn Reynolds
